Digital Transformation Tech Talk – 30 September 2025

Hello everyone and welcome to today's

tech talk. Thanks for joining us for the

latest digital transformation

developments for the age care sector.

I'm Janine Bennett and the assistant

secretary and engagement lead for the

department's digital transformation

program and I'll be your moderator for

today's webinar.

Before we get started, I'd like to say a

quick thank you to Emily Simlat who

stepped in and hosted our last tech talk

on my behalf earlier this month. Today

I'm really pleased to be back with you

all and thank you for joining us once

again.

I'm coming to you from Canberra today on

the lands of the Nanowal and the Nambry

people. I'd like to start by

acknowledging the traditional custodians

of this land and pay my respects to

elders past, present and emerging. I'd

also like uh to extend that respect to

any Aboriginal and toourist rate

islander people joining us today. It's

great to have you with us. A few quick

housekeeping notes for everyone. if you

have any connection issues during the

session. As usual, you'll find the

dialin details on your screen right now.

They're also in your meeting invite for

your reference. As always, today's

webinar is being recorded. We'll upload

the video to our website so you can

revisit it or share it with anyone who

wasn't able to join us today. We also

want to make sure that you can easily

access all the links from today's

webinar. So, those links have already

been posted in the chat um which you can

copy. They'll also be displayed as QR

codes on screen during the session if

you'd like to access them on your device

during the relevant presentation. And

then you'll also get the links in the

postevent email. So hopefully that gives

you lots of ways to easily access those

resources.

As always today, we've set aside the

last 30 minutes of this session for

questions and answers. We've already

opened the Q&A function, so feel free to

enter your questions as we go. use that

Q&A tab on the top of your screen and

remember to vote up any um other

questions that you see that you're

interested in having answered. You can

do that straight from the Q&A tab.

Unfortunately or fortunately, we almost

always get more questions than we have

time to answer. We know that this is a

really crucial time for the sector as we

approach the 1st of November and that

you need those answers as quickly as

possible. So to get through as many

questions today as we can, I'll be

reading all of those questions to the

panel on your behalf. Next year, we're

hoping we can return back to our usual

method where we bring you to stage and

have a bit more of a conversation. Uh

but for now, we do really want to

prioritize the throughput so we can

answer as many questions as we can in

the room. If you don't get a response to

your question today in session, we'll

work to get those answers for you. So

for highly specific or detailed

questions relating to your individual

circumstances, we ask that you include

your name in the question so that our

team can get in contact with you and

work with you to get the right answer.

For more general questions, we send

those directly through to the relevant

business areas and subject matter

experts. They then use that input to

update their existing resources, things

like the support at home program manual

or to add to new resources like FAQs

where we can. We like to ensure that the

really popular questions get answered at

our future events. We've done this a

couple of times, including the last two

tech talks.

We're also using those questions to

inform agenda items and future speakers

um at our our future tech talks as well.

A quick disclaimer. Keep in mind that

our focus here at Tech Talk is on our

technology and digital delivery work.

We'll do our best to answer any and all

questions, but generally our focus will

be on those areas. Before we get into

the agenda, I'd also like to welcome any

media representatives we have joining us

today. Great to have you with us. We

appreciate your continued interest in

the important transformation work

happening here in age care. If you have

any media related questions though, we

do ask that you direct those to our

media and events team at

news@health.gov.auu.

Those folks are best placed to help you

with your media questions.

Okay. And now to the agenda. So first up

today we have Faith Levaris who will be

taking us through our digital

transformation update. Then Erica

Barnett will provide an update on

support at home. After Erica, we're

welcoming Luke Stein from the age care

quality and safety commission. and then

Shahara Parara who is also here with us

today providing an update on GPMS and

then as already mentioned we'll finish

up the session with our usual Q&A.

So as usual a packed agenda I'll uh not

take up any more time and hand you over

to Faith Lavaris. FA is the chief

digital information officer for the

department of health disability and

aging and she's responsible for driving

the department's digital transformation

agenda in age care and beyond. FA, over

to you.

Thank you, Janine. And nice to see

you're back. Emily did a great job

filling in for you last webinar. So, if

you ever need to take another uh break,

I think she's definitely got the right

things for the moderation um position.

So, it's only been four weeks since our

last webinar, but uh we brought the date

forward because we knew we would have

some important information to share with

you. Uh and we wanted to do that as soon

as possible. And since the last time

we've met, the new age care act we've

been waiting for uh the new legislation

to be passed by parliament uh before we

could give out some more specific uh

details around the rules to you. Um

well, I'm pleased to announce that the

age care and other legislative amendment

bill 2025 has now been passed, meaning

we can now be more comprehensive with

the information we pass on. And so

that's great news for everyone. Um you

will hear uh many references to that all

throughout today's webinar. Uh but

before we do that we have some updates

on the digital transformation roadmap

and some updated resources. So let's let

me get into that really quickly. Um

first up the road map. As usual it's

caveated with the usual disclaimer. It's

important to note that the timeline on

the road map is there to support the age

care reform agenda, but it should not be

considered an official commitment from

government that happens elsewhere

through processes outside of these tech

talks. As you've probably heard at these

sessions previously, we make a point of

sharing this road map early and often.

So, when changes occur, and they have,

um, our intent is to call it out here.

Last session we brought you um the plan

G GPMS uh deliverables for fe February

as part of our staged implementation.

Today I'm pleased to add the addition of

the my age care deliverables for

February. Uh these new deliverables

include improved residential age care

data transmission between the department

systems and services Australia. Uh we

automate the generation of the CHSP

notice of decision letters. We're

finalizing elements of the support at

home transition and we're enhancing the

integrated assessment tool process for

urgent services. We've also added some

updates from services Australia as you

can see. Those are the ones in the pink

down the bottom of the road map. Um

these highlight when providers can start

invoicing and claiming under the new

support at home arrangement and the

ongoing monitoring and the stabilization

work that's um will happen post go live.

We want to be open and transparent about

our path beyond the 1st of November and

provide you with early visibility of

what's ahead in our journey. But we have

a lot to get through today and since

this is our last session with you ahead

of the 1st of November, we will bring

you more in-depth overview of what's

happening in 2026 uh later in the year.

Okay. So, let's get on with some of the

new resources. So, um that you know the

new age care act roadmap was released

yesterday. So we're happy to get to you

this very quickly today. The road map

outlines key dates and milestones for

the age care providers to be aware of as

we approach the implementation of the

1st of November. It includes system

outage dates and the antip anticipated

release dates of additional guidance and

support materials. So um that's a new

one. Get in there and have a look at

that one. The new age care rules for

2025 are now available online. I'm sure

everyone is aware that these rules

establish the operational detail needed

to implement the age care act of 2024.

The rules clarify much of the detail

many of you have been seeking and will

be a resource you may need to consult

over the coming weeks. So, uh have a

read and then of course we're always

here to support any questions. Uh

there's a new ANACH I call it ANACH, the

Australia National Age Care

Classification Funding Guide has been

updated. This guides um guide provides

information uh for approved residential

providers on the ANAC funding model and

it sets out how to receive ANAC

subsidies including relevant compliance

requirements that may apply and there's

also the specialized status guide for

residential age care providers as well.

It's also been updated.

Uh if we move on, we've got uh 24 care

minutes and 24 by7 registered nursing

responsibilities.

Um for these um you can see the care

minutes responsibility guide has been

recently uh added information on how

many care minutes associated with each

ANA class used to calculate the service

level care minute targets applying from

the 1st of October. Um so that one's hot

off the press. and the 24 by7 registered

nursing responsibility document only had

a minor change to remove information

around split services. So have a look at

those. Um the Commonwealth Support

Program has two new pro resources to

help CHSB providers understand their

compliance requirements under the new

act starting from the first. These

include a letter to providers, a fact

sheet, and a fact sheet for um a fact

sheet for providers, and then another

fact sheet for clients.

All right. Um still a couple more to go,

but working our way through it. There's

a data exchange toolkit for stage one

and the uh data exchange dictionary have

also been uh updated for you for uh

support at home. So get your hands on

those to help start looking at some of

the detail. There's also from support at

home a range of new updated support

resources uh have been published

including version four of the support

home manual um sorry the support at home

program manual transition guide to

providers delivering services for older

Aboriginal and toouristr islander

people. There's a summary of indicative

uh support at home prices and there's

also a fact sheet on that one as well.

And then last but not least for our

resources, the latest schedule of

subsidies and supplements is now

available and it includes the daily

rates of subsidies around those four

categories that you can see there. Um so

yeah, watch this space as we continue to

send uh more information. Um also we've

got a commencement on some pilot sites

for our Aboriginal and toouristr

islander age care assessment

organizations. So the department has

entered into contract with three uh

Aboriginal and toouristr islander age

care assessment organization. This marks

the commencement of phase one of the

roll out. A pilot of the approach to

inform the future implementation on how

we do these together. This phase will

pilot the IT systems, the onboarding

processes, assessment processes and

their outcomes as well as training and

support systems to ensure everything is

working well before we expand more

broadly. The pilot organizations are

located in different areas as you can

see um in different regions uh

distributed across five different states

and territories and it's a setting with

a mix of metro, regional and remote and

very remote locations um are covered in

the scope of the pilot. The

organizations and their age care

planning regions uh you can see those on

the screen. I won't go through them. Uh

these organizations are currently

onboarding and they will be listed on

the single assessment system.